4. Both public and private sector consultees shared many examples of good working relationships that benefited from services being delivered well, content end users and robust monthly reports being submitted with, when appropriate, Deductions being made. However, we also heard broad levels of concern from the public sector that self-reporting isn't working as well as it should, with four principal concerns being cited:
(a) Inspection and management regimes not being thorough enough to pick up all issues;
(b) Issues were not being accurately described in reports;
(c) Complex drafting in service levels agreements often being ambiguous; and
(d) SPV Owners and Management Service Providers passing on O&M Providers' reports without any scrutiny.
We also heard from some SPV Owners that in some instances their boards of directors felt that their O&M Providers and Management Service Providers were not sharing information and data with the level of transparency that they would like.
5. The above concerns on self-reporting were typically backed up by sharing specific examples. This was particularly clear in cases where, as highlighted in the previous section, the relevant Public Authority implemented a step change in its approach to contract management. By way of example, we heard several examples of how more active monitoring of the help desk operation (including fault reporting and fault rectification) had highlighted to the relevant Public Authority material insufficiencies in the SPV's (and O&M Provider's) reporting processes. Increased monitoring has highlighted that standards can slip if the self-reporting mechanisms are not properly audited and assured.